Discourse Map

Discourse Memo

Date: September 12, 2012 To: Carolyn Drapes From: Samantha Hilding Subject: Discourse Community Map Group Project Response Memo A discourse community is a group of people who can communicate about a certain way of thinking or are part of a group who think the same way. In our group Robert, Roberto, Jazmin and I decided to cover family and friends, civic and academic. We all contributed many ideas and decided to pick the ones all of us could relate to the most. Our first discourse community was social networking which we labeled to be civic. The members of this community can range between friends and family to classmates to complete strangers. Anyone could become part of this discourse community just by adding somebody as a friend. Many people within El Paso meet by befriending each other on sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Most of the communication is casual and friendly within the messages, comments and instant messages. Some users might incorporate other languages such as Spanish or Spanglish in our area. The writing would be quick, casual, shorthand so that conversations would not take long and interactions would be brief. The second discourse community was family and friends. Family ranges from parents to siblings to cousins to uncles and aunts to grandparents to great grandparents. To enter this community one would need to either be born or married into a family, or become close friends with a family member. This community may consist of the native tongue of the family if they are all from the same country or a type of mix such as Spanglish so that the message of a conversation will come across clearly. The writings would be personal and confidential if in a letter or email regarding the wellbeing of other family members in a manner that could be shorthand or some what professional. They letters and emails could also consist of meetings such as family reunions, holiday gatherings or mournful experiences. Our next discourse community was Undergraduates which we labeled to be academic. In this community members could consist of students, professors, peer leaders and teachers assistants. To enter this community students must apply and be granted admission into an undergraduate program. Professors must also apply for a position as well as teachers assistants. The community can use multiple languages seeing as different languages can be taken as a course. There might also be a form of slang between peers and some sort of professionalism between professors and peer to professors. The writings would be a form of professionalism if the student receives an assignment from the professor. However the language may be different in the sense that it could be a casual conversation in class, a heated debate or friends discussing personal events. Working in a group for our first project was a good experience for me because it breaks the awkward air in the class and allows all students to make a friend they can rely on if they need help or missed a class. As a group we chose to create a map similar to the example because we thought it would convey our communities in an organized manner. Our design kept our map legible and neat looking while promoting school colors. Our writing process began with coming up with multiple ideas for discourse communities. I believe this process took the longest and was the most difficult. We came to a conclusion by deciding on the four we all felt the most comfortable with. After we decided on our four communities the writing naturally fell into place when we thought about what was expected and associated with our communities. However with creating this map I discovered both, our individualities and our common traits to be of value seeing as they can both set you apart and bring you together. The good thing was that all of us, Jazmin, Robert, Roberto and I all got along. We had no lack of contribution and no lack of focus. We worked well together. If I did have a second chance though I do believe I would give a map a more unique look. Something that was still legible yet very unique and interesting. I would want our map to have the appearance of a spider web, where each strand can be different, but each strand comes together forming the discourse communities.

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